Families and their children with special healthcare needs require effective interventions to address children’s needs in the context of daily family interactions. This article offers a unique perspective to understanding the role of family-centered care. It extends beyond expected practice in service delivery to the role of families in the implementation of intervention research, specifically w...

The importance of patient-centered care and the role of families in decision-making are becoming more recognized. Starting with a single acute care unit, a multidisciplinary improvement team at Cincinnati Children's Hospital developed and implemented a new process that allows families to decide if they want to be part of attending-physician rounds. Family involvement seems to improve communicat...

The US Maternal and Child Health Bureau's Division of Services to Children With Special Health Care Needs has developed a national agenda for the development of systems of care of children with special health care needs. The purpose of this presentation was to discuss family activism in the care of children with special health care needs, and to explore the obstacles and successes encountered b...

Providing patientand family-centered care is not a simple endeavor. It requires a transformation in organizational culture that is ref lected in a myriad of details at the departmental, clinical, and individual provider and patient levels. Patientand family-centered practitioners know that it is not a recipe or formula of specific practices, but an evolving approach that guides policy and progr...

BACKGROUND To humanize the management of children in hospitals has become a serious concern of civil society and one of the main goals of public and private health centers, health care providers and governments. DISCUSSION The concepts of family-centered and family-oriented care are discussed with the aim to emphasize their importance in pediatrics. Notions related to family-centered care, su...

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was an association between care coordination, family-centered care, and functional ability among children with special health care needs (CSHCN). Analysis of data from the 2005-2006 National Survey of CSHCN revealed that the percentages of CSHCN receiving care coordination and family-centered care were 59.3 and 66.3, respectively. Children who...